Abundant Is the Grace of God, Tenfold and a Hundredfold—
the Fruit of Love Abides Forever
At the beginning of 2010, when President Ma Ying-jeou invited me to serve as Secretary-General of the National Security Council, Pastor Zhou Shenzhu and Pastor Shen Zheng, who had always prayed for me, proposed forming a small prayer meeting, inviting some pastors and elders in the Lord to come regularly to pray for the Christians among the government leaders and for our nation in its many troubles. At that time I hoped the brothers of the church could also take part, so I went to the Xinji Building to visit Brother Wu and exchange views. Brother Wu gladly agreed, and personally came together with Brother Ke Shiling to take part in the prayer. Not only so, but later, at the annual "National Prayer Breakfast," he also asked Sister Lin Xiuhua to take part in the preparation work, offering many valuable suggestions, and he also arranged for the brothers and sisters to actively participate in the various services of the gathering, even up to now. In addition, it was also at the "National Prayer Breakfast" of 2015 that, because of the participation of the brothers of the church, I met Brother Liu Weilun. He, Brother Liang Tiemin, and I then formed a Bible-reading group meeting at Hall Three, and from then on began the Wednesday group meeting at Hall Three, supplying and learning from one another each week.
Actually, in that conversation with Brother Wu ten years ago, the greatest discovery was that, besides our common precious faith and our common background at the Affiliated High School of National Taiwan Normal University (I was taught in Experimental Class Nineteen of the Affiliated High School and graduated in 1965, while Brother Wu later served as a teacher at the Affiliated High School, nurturing countless talents), we unexpectedly also shared one more common background: the Dachen Islands.
It turned out that in 1951, when the Chinese Communists had just occupied the mainland not long before, and during the Korean War, the government, in order to consolidate the hundreds of leaderless anti-Communist guerrilla bands along the Jiangsu-Zhejiang coast so as to form a fighting force and raid the mainland, sent my father, General Hu Zongnan, to the Dachen Archipelago off the coast of Zhejiang, to organize and train these volunteer fighters and build them into the "Jiangsu-Zhejiang Anti-Communist National Salvation Army." Because of the needs of the mission, my father asked his good friend Mr. Chiang Ching-kuo to recommend a capable man to go together to Dachen for intelligence and political work, and Mr. Chiang accordingly recommended Mr. Shen Zhiyue, who had achieved great success working in the Bureau of Investigation and Statistics and who later successfully reformed the Investigation Bureau of the Ministry of Justice in Taiwan. My father set out in September of that year from Keelung aboard a navy warship; Mr. Shen arrived afterward, and for the advancement of the work he also invited several comrades-in-arms from the Bureau of Investigation and Statistics to labor together. Brother Wu's late father, Mr. Caojian, was one of them; on that barren, desolate island of Dachen they began their struggle from nothing, almost empty-handed.
From 1952 on, my father led the trained Anti-Communist National Salvation Army and the navy stationed there in repeated raids on the mainland coast; and after the Chinese Communists, with Soviet aid, established their air force, they began to bomb the Dachen Islands. So Dachen was at that time the only battlefield on the firing line—a place far from Taiwan and dangerous. The so-called "political work" was battlefield administration, including organizing and training the populace, promotion and communication, gathering intelligence, assisting the garrison in combat, and solving the people's problems in life and work. In fact, in those years the guerrillas, apart from training and fighting, were extremely lacking in material conditions and lived in hardship—for example, dwelling year-round in tents amid the wind and rain, with straw for bedding, several men sharing a single quilt; and my father himself often staved off hunger with rice soaked in salt water. Later, after much difficulty, they finally obtained approval from within the country and secured wages for the guerrilla fighters: yet it was no more than a token two dollars per person per month. Therefore the living conditions of Mr. Shen Zhiyue's team, including Mr. Caojian, were naturally about the same; but not only did they take it as sweet, their political work also achieved brilliant success and deeply won the hearts of the people. In February 1955, after the Battle of Yijiangshan, when the government decided to evacuate both the garrison and the populace of Dachen to Taiwan, more than twenty thousand Dachen people, out of gratitude to the government, were actually all willing to leave their ancestral homeland where their families had lived for generations and move to the treasure island of Taiwan.
In those years the heavy burden of life for the family members who remained in Taipei naturally fell upon the mothers—so it was with Brother Wu, and so it was with my family. Marvelously, in those very years of hardship, the grace of God came abundantly: my mother, after years of being touched and influenced by various people, was finally baptized and turned to the Lord in 1952, and from then on went a step further to lead my four siblings and me and our whole family to believe in the Lord. Among them, my younger brother Weishan later even served as an elder at the "Praise the Lord Church" in Taipei, serving the Lord for many years without ceasing; my younger sister Weiming became a pastor's wife, shepherding in Chinese churches in America for decades; and my father too turned to the Lord in his later years. The Wu family was even more astonishing: not only did Mr. Caojian and his wife themselves believe in and love the Lord, but among their children, four—Brother Youcheng, Brother Fulin, Brother Xinghua, and Brother Fuhua—actually all consecrated themselves to full-time service, faithfully serving the Lord in different cities; and their only daughter, Yunlan, inherited her father's mantle, serving in the Military Intelligence Bureau of the Ministry of National Defense. Although she was taken by the Lord some years earlier, to our unceasing regret, the testimony she bore for the Lord and the fruit she bore were already rich and abundant.
Although Brother Youcheng was wholeheartedly for the church and the brothers and sisters, I believe his love for his country was no less than his father's, so he naturally treasured very much the books I successively provided to him concerning family history. On the eve of the New Year this year, on January 24, when I visited him at Hall One, I still hoped to soon give him a new book that would be published this year. That day his spirits were good. When we talked about the miracle of his rescue on the airplane last year, he could not help but feel regret that, because he now had to undergo dialysis every other day, he could not go abroad to serve for more than two days. Of course I never thought this would be our last conversation. God has His time; precious in the sight of Jehovah is the death of His holy ones—how much more when he was the Lord's servant. What an honorable status this is!
May God continue to lead and bless the brother's family members and the fruit he bore and cared for over many years, that they may bear yet more fruit, tenfold and a hundredfold.
Brother Wu, we will meet again.